From the time that Washington boasted of a system that proposes to furnish the means of education to “every child of the republic,” the educational spirit has been a prominent characteristic of our people. Amid all our national vicissitudes and struggles, defending the flag from foes without and within, cutting down the forests to make farms for cultivation, and clearing up the waste places to make them habitable, we have never lost our educational enterprise. In the far West, as well as in Maine and Massachusetts, you meet it. Not to be wondered at, either, is this in a people who had the courage and faith to launch such a governmental scheme as is ours. Indeed, it required little discernment to see that popular institutions could be served by no other handmaid than popular education.

It is gratifying to note that our zeal for education did not prove a transient impulse, but that of an abiding conviction. Never have the reports from all parts of the Union, taken as a whole, been so encouraging as now. Stupidity and demagogism are still to be found in many places, and, of course, as ever, doing their best to hinder progress. But in spite of all such influences, educators throughout the nation feel that the cause, with the modifications of better methods, is understood and appreciated by the better and larger part of the public. An examination of reports and statistics of all the States and Territories for ten years past, shows advancement in almost every instance. Financial depression or shifting population will explain the exceptions. In the State of Ohio in the single year of 1879-80, three-fourths of a million dollars was expended in new school-houses. The young State of West Virginia reports seventeen hundred more teachers employed at the close of the decade than at the beginning. The State of Missouri reports a like number, and an increased enrollment of nearly sixty thousand, exclusive of those who had come of school age, thus showing a deep inroad into the ranks of illiteracy. These citations illustrate the advance movement all along the line. And while our common schools are thus moving onward, it is no less a sign of national devotion to education that schools of higher grades are springing up everywhere. Special and charitable schools for the deaf and dumb, for the weak-minded, industrial training schools, etc., all of them upheld by the same national spirit. Nor to be forgotten are the schools for all classes at home, where by correspondence and concert of work, results which none can measure are attained. Let us rejoice and give thanks!

But the most hopeful thought that comes to us in connection with our national education, is of the fact that in nearly all parts of the country it is required that moral instruction be given in the schools. “Instruction in morals and good manners,” is the language of requirement in the school laws of many States. Others charge “all instructors to impress on the youth committed to them the principles of morality, justice, a sacred regard of truth, love of country, chastity, temperance, etc.” The school code of New Hampshire demands that “religion, piety, and morality be encouraged.” In several States the Bible is to be brought before the pupils by the prescribed daily reading of it, as in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia; and in many others the reading of it has express legalization. Herein is the sheet anchor of all our hopes. Cultured mind and heart alone give assurance of a successful national voyage.

The scientific world has suffered a heavy loss in the death of Professor Henry Draper, of New York. He was the son of Dr. John W. Draper, one of the most eminent scientific men this country has produced. Professor Draper inherited the tastes and talents of his illustrious father, and, while yet a youth, began his scientific and physiological investigations. He received his early educational training in the public schools of New York, after which he spent two years in the Academic Department of the University of the City of New York. During all this time his studies were under the careful supervision of his father, who was a professor in the University. After completing his sophomore year he entered upon the study of medicine, and received his degree in 1858. After his graduation he spent a year in Europe in study and travel, and on his return to this country he received an appointment on the medical staff of Bellevue Hospital. He continued in this position for two years, when he was elected to the chair of physiology in the City University. When he entered upon his duties as professor he discontinued the practice of medicine, which he never afterward resumed, and gave himself wholly to teaching and to original investigation in natural science, but was especially devoted to the study of chemistry and astronomy. He was not, however, dependent upon the facilities afforded by the University to enable him to pursue his investigations in his favorite sciences, but, being possessed of ample means, he had a finely equipped laboratory fitted up in his own apartments, and also erected an observatory for his own use.

In order to facilitate his astronomical observations, Professor Draper constructed an equatorial telescope, with an aperture of twenty-eight inches, for his private observatory at Hastings, on the Hudson. This telescope was the work of his own hands, and when completed was the largest one of the kind in the United States. His astronomical investigations were principally of a photographical character. He was peculiarly adapted to this kind of work, since he had studied photography with his father, who was a pioneer in the photographic art, having taken the first photographic likeness of the human face ever obtained. By means of his large telescope, Professor Draper was able to take the largest and finest photographs of the heavenly bodies ever obtained, and by this means greatly advanced the interests of science. To him was due also the discovery of the gelatino-bromide dry process of photography, which has proven so useful to the art of photography, especially in its application to astronomy. In 1874, after much labor and many costly experiments, he succeeded in obtaining photographs of the fixed lines of stellar spectra, which no one before had ever been able to accomplish. By obtaining photographs of the spectrum of the sun he was able to demonstrate the existence of oxygen in that luminary, a fact never before known to astronomers. His numerous and successful efforts in this line of work rendered him so conspicuous that he was conceded to be without a peer in the department of sidereal photography. As a result of his grand achievements the commissioners appointed by Congress to make arrangements for the observation of the transit of Venus, in 1874, selected him as the superintendent of the photographic department. He performed his duties with such efficiency that Congress ordered a gold medal to be presented to him, bearing the inscription: “He adds lustre to ancestral glory.”

In addition to being an expert in astronomical photography Professor Draper was a fine analytical chemist, and in addition to his work as professor of physiology, for several years he taught analytical chemistry in the University. During the last few years of his life he was very much interested in the subject of electricity, and gave much time and study to the problem of overcoming the difficulties of adapting the electric light to practical use, and contributed much valuable information on this point.

Although so enthusiastically devoted to the interests of science, Professor Draper was not a recluse, but was of a fine social turn. He was a fluent talker, an entertaining companion and a genial host. When the first symptoms of his fatal illness came upon him he was engaged in entertaining at dinner, in his hospitable home on Madison avenue, New York, the members of the National Academy of Science. He died in the prime of his years and in the fulness of his mental strength. The country can ill-afford to lose men of such mental ability and so enthusiastically devoted to scientific research.

Co-Education.

Rising in interest and importance above every other phase of the “woman question,” is that of her education, her higher education, and from this the question of co-education. The first cause which has associated the idea of co-education with the higher education of women, has been the fact that higher educational facilities are, with very few exceptions, limited to the colleges and universities established for the education of men. If woman is to receive higher education it is apparent at the start that the institutions called woman’s colleges and seminaries are inadequate to the work. Hence, whatever other considerations may enter into the co-education problem, this much is clear: if women now, or at any time in the near future, are to have these facilities they must come by some system of co-education, as only institutions now existing for men can furnish them. This suggests the economic and time element of the question. Colleges and universities of ability to do the work of higher education are not born in a day. The best representatives of such institutions in this country and in England are the growth of centuries, and their cabinets, laboratories, museums, libraries, and endowments the results of weary, slow accumulations.

Not to speak now of the other and more positive reasons in its favor, reasons growing out of the association of the sexes in recitation and lecture-room, and the wholesome influences on each thus secured, let us see what are the objections urged by its opponents. We hear a good deal about the tendency to make coarse the naturally fine fibre of woman, about constitutional differences of intellect, and difference of sphere and pursuits in life. Now, in all soberness, if there is anything in this idea that association of the sexes tends to rob woman of the charms of fineness and gentleness peculiar to her, how is it that she has managed to keep them from the days of Adam and Eve until now? And as to differences of intellect, they are neither so constitutional nor “unconstitutional” as to disqualify her for an even race with her brother. If the testimony of professors and college authorities, where the opportunity has been given her, can be relied upon, whenever the race is uneven it has been in her favor. The objection about sphere and pursuits in life misconceives the true purpose of education. The true conception is not addressed to pursuits, but is of a solid foundation on which the special education of pursuit or profession is erected.

Recognizing the force and truth of these and other considerations, and acting up to their convictions, the great and time-honored universities of the English speaking world, Oxford and Cambridge, have led the way, and thrown wide open their doors to young women seeking their privileges. At these honored institutions young women live in their own “halls,” as at some of our American colleges, under care of women of highest social standing, enter the same lecture-room and listen to the same lecture with the young men. The following from a leading educational journal, reveals the growing favor of co-education at Cambridge: “Since the modest beginning thirteen years ago of Girton College,—the woman’s college at Cambridge,—it has twice been found necessary to make considerable extensions. The students have proved themselves eager to profit by the advantages afforded to them, as was shown by their distinctions obtained at Cambridge this year. It is now once more intended to develop the work of the college by making further and more elaborate extensions. For some time past a number of applicants have been refused admission owing to the want of space, and plans have at last been adopted which will make room for more students.”

It is not a little strange the illiberal spirit manifested by some of the leading institutions of this country, instance the narrow and partial conditions of the “Harvard Annex” and the opposition by the trustees and part of the faculty of Columbia College. In the latter case there is just now a tidal wave of public sentiment in New York City sweeping against the opposition, which, it is to be hoped, will overcome all resistance. The leaven is working. It is a reform, and reforms go forward in this nineteenth century. Geologists tell us that six thousand years ago the age of man was ushered in. Let the future geologists record this as the age of man and woman, too.

Thurlow Weed.

Among noteworthy recent events is the death of Thurlow Weed, the veteran journalist and politician. Mr. Weed had nearly reached his eighty-fifth birthday with faculties well preserved, and for more than half a century he was a very prominent figure in our national political life. The son of a poor cartman who never prospered, he had his own way to make in the world, and from a striker in a blacksmith shop, a cabin-boy upon river boats, and a chore-boy of a printing office, he worked his way up to be the trusted adviser of senators and presidents, and the man by whom officials, high and low, were made and unmade. He was twice a member of the State Assembly of New York,—in 1824 and 1829,—but never held any other office. He refused official position for himself, but no man has been more influential in securing it for others. Mr. Weed’s work as a journalist was for the most part in connection with the Albany Evening Journal, though before assuming control of this paper he had edited a number of others, by one of which, the Anti-Masonic Enquirer, he had gained wide celebrity. During the thirty-two years of his management of the Journal he made it with his trenchant pen one of the mightiest of the auxiliaries of the Whig and Republican parties, and he was himself a political leader second in influence to none. Retiring from this paper in 1862, he afterward edited for a time the New York Commercial Advertiser, but failing health soon obliged him to drop finally the editorial pen. He continued, however, to write for the press until a short time before his death, and the occasional articles he sent to different journals always commanded an eager reading. In 1866 letters which he wrote to the Albany Evening Journal from Europe and the West Indies, when different visits were made to these countries, were collected and published in a handsome volume, without his consent.

There is much in the life-work of Mr. Weed for which he should be gratefully remembered. Though he was a strong and earnest partisan, he was a true patriot. He was a consistent friend of human liberty and human equality. In the early part of our civil war, in company with Bishop McIlvaine and Archbishop Hughes, he went to Europe charged with the important mission of promoting friendliness to the Union cause on the other side of the water, and the mission was discharged with great skill and faithfulness. Perhaps to Mr. Weed for his work in connection with this embassy the nation owes a greater debt than we know. To the close of his life he was the earnest advocate of what we believe to be a vicious principle in politics. He was not of those who demand reform in the civil service. A change in the mode by which the offices are filled in our land found no favor in his eyes. The old way was good enough for him. He believed with Andrew Jackson, that “to the victors belong the spoils.” We can not greatly admire that role of party manager which he played with such consummate ability. There are higher ends certainly to which a man may give his powers than the success of party and the elevation of men to political stations. But this is to be said of Mr. Weed, he was an upright and honorable man, and in playing the game of politics he was actuated by better aims than those of many. He left for his family quite a large estate, but it was acquired through legitimate transactions of business. He had a circle of friends of whom any one might be proud, and they were by no means confined to the members of his own political party. Probably by far the most valuable collection of autograph letters in the land was in his possession. His home-life was admirable. He had a benevolent spirit, and his charitable gifts were many. And it is pleasant to have it to record of him that he lived and died a believer in evangelical religion. His interest in the Moody and Sankey meetings in New York City a few years ago is well remembered. We sum up his character: a man of strong will, of indomitable perseverance and energy, of remarkable power to control men and attach men to himself, and pure and good in private life.